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Investigation of poly(l-lactic acid)/graphene oxide composites crystallization and nanopore foaming behaviors via supercritical carbon dioxide low temperature foaming

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Abstract

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA)/graphene oxide (GO) nanocomposites were prepared by solution mixing. Differential scanning calorimetry results indicated that GO was an effective nucleating agent. The size of spherulites decreased, the density of spherulites increased with increasing GO and the crystallinity of PLA increased from 4.34 to 49.01%. For isothermal crystallization, the crystallization rates of PLA/GO nanocomposites were significantly higher than that of neat PLA, in which t0.5 reduced from 9.0 to 2.8. Spindle-like nanopores (about 100–200 nm) that arranged like spherulites were prepared by low temperature foaming. It was found that the crystallization rate increase and spherulite morphology change were insignificant when the content of GO exceeded 0.5 wt%, because the excessive GO increased the number of nucleation sites while restricting the PLA crystal growth. Thus, the arrangement of nanopores did not mimick the spherulites because of imperfect crystal morphology.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank National Nature Science Foundation of China for the financial support (Contract Grant Nos. 21174044, 51573063, and 11272093); Guangdong Nature Science Foundation (Contract Grant No. S2013020013855); National Basic Research Development Program 973 in China (Contract Grant No. 2012CB025902); Guangdong Province Higher Vocational Colleges & Schools Pearl River Scholar Funded Scheme (2012); Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (D2155470).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Equipment and Control Engineering, School of Mechanical & Automotive Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, People’s Republic of China

    Li-Hong Geng, Xin Jing & Hao-Yang Mi

  2. National Engineer Research Center of Novel Equipment for Polymer Processing, The Key Laboratory of Polymer Processing Engineering of Ministry of Education, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, People’s Republic of China

    Li-Hong Geng, Xiang-Fang Peng & Bin-Yi Chen

  3. Technology Development Center for Polymer Processing Engineering of Guangdong Colleges and Universities, Guangdong Industry Technical College, Guangzhou, 510640, People’s Republic of China

    Leng-Wan Li, An Huang & Bai-Ping Xu

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  1. Li-Hong Geng
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  2. Xiang-Fang Peng
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Correspondence to Bin-Yi Chen or Hao-Yang Mi.

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Geng, LH., Peng, XF., Jing, X. et al. Investigation of poly(l-lactic acid)/graphene oxide composites crystallization and nanopore foaming behaviors via supercritical carbon dioxide low temperature foaming. Journal of Materials Research 31, 348–359 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2016.13

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